A Liberal in Trumpistan: Trump: Ignorant or Malevolent, Take Your Pick

DID THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES just threaten to undermine the First Amendment this week?

Yes.

He did.

Does Donald J. Trump secretly hope to stamp out a free press?

It’s unclear.

If you missed the story, on Wednesday the President casually revealed the danger in one of seventeen tweets. God, that fool man loves to tweet! In fact, this much should be obvious by now. We have a leader who thinks in 140-character bits. (Since I wrote this, Twitter doubled the possible length.) At best, Trump is incapable of coming to grips with complex thoughts, be it the Constitutional limits imposed on any chief executive or the nature of Americans’ most cherished rights. It could be when he tweets he is simply displaying his ignorance. Or he may have malicious intent.

In either case, an elected official who cavalierly threatens to trample the First Amendment must be watched with extreme care.

WE’VE SEEN WORRISOME signals before. There was Candidate Trump telling supporters he might pay their legal fees if they punched out protesters. There was Trump calling for Katie Tur, a petite young reporter, to be fired because her coverage of him wasn’t positive enough. There was Trump at a rally stirring the crowd against Tur, so that Secret Service agents had to guide her to safety. More recently, the President insisted that an ESPN writer be fired for insulting him—via Twitter, for god’s sake. Finally, he has called NFL players who protest “sons of bitches” and demanded they be fired for disrespecting the flag. But those players have made it clear they are not against our soldiers or flag.

Their protest began with a handful of African-American players bringing attention to what they felt was injustice—too-frequent police violence directed against blacks. Now the protest has spread. It aims at Trump himself.

You need not agree with the players’ position. You do need to keep this much in mind. The protections guaranteed under the First Amendment supersede any personal feelings any of us, including the President, might have. When Tea Party protesters marched against Obama they had every right. If a Fox News commentator wishes to lambaste Hillary Clinton, the First Amendment is clear. That commentator may do so without fear. If I want to call Trump the worst president in U.S. history, not excepting Warren G. Harding, I am saying what the Bill of Rights makes clear I have every right to say. Even the most despicable citizens among us, the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville in August, have clear First Amendment rights.

The courts have ruled that only “hate speech” or speech which creates “a clear and present danger” can be limited by legal means.

I think even a Trump fan might be able to see that kneeling is not a form of “hate speech.”

THE DANGER should be clear. What should worry any thinking American is the growing sense Trump has the instincts of any tin-pot dictator. And Wednesday he dragged his attacks on the First Amendment to a new low.

Here’s the offending tweet, aimed at NBC, because he fumes over that organization’s coverage: “Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!”

Oh. I see! So silly of me to imagine the President wants to stifle a free press.

He’s only thinking of us. He only cares about what’s good for the public. In fact, what would be really good for each and every American would be if we all decided to watch way, way more Fox News.

What the President seems to desire is that we fill our heads with as much propaganda as we can possibly stand. Meanwhile, if he can stir enough anger in his base he may try to hamstring those whose jobs, by their very nature, involve presentation of often very uncomfortable facts. Two of Trump’s tweets Wednesday were howls of rage claiming “fake news.”

By now even the dumbest Trump fan, some poor soul wearing a too-small red MAGA hat, so tight it constricts the flow of blood to the brain, should grasp one fundamental truth. “Fake news” is any news that makes Donald J. Trump look bad. In the same way “real news” is any news that makes Trump look good. (Great is better; but he can sometimes be content with just good.) Taken together, those two ideas, rattling around in the president’s head, make for a volatile mix.

If you have never followed the president’s Twitter feed you can catch up simply by clicking this link: trumptwitterarchive.com/archive. What you discover, if you do, are the ramblings of a delusional soul, a duly-elected fool. One feature allows you to search the archive by word, term or phrase. That’s when you realize Trump wants the media to serve up as many heaping plate fulls of praise as the public will swallow.

Equally clear: he has his chosen cooks.

We saw this Wednesday when four tweets, including the last of the day, were pleas to tune in to his favorite “real news” show: “RT @realDonaldTrump: I will be interviewed tonight on @FoxNews by @SeanHannity at 9pmE. Enjoy!”

Trump was at it again when the sun rose over the Rose Garden Thursday. His first tweet came at 5:04 a.m.: “Clips from tax speech and @seanhannity on @foxandfriends now. Have a great day!”

IF NOTHING ELSE, Trump seems to think he can dupe the majority of Americans into believing he’s doing a great job. Should that fail, his secondary goal seems to be to convince his loyal followers that all stories that shed a negative light on his policies, his erratic behavior, his administration in all its bizarre permutations, members of his family, those chummy with Russians and those not, are false. A hundred times and more since he took office (105 tweets) he has, like the boy who cried “wolf,” squealed over supposed “fake news.” He has assailed ABC, CBS and NBC. He has called into question the veracity of CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and the Washington Post.

Far more dangerous, the President of the United States has stirred hatred against reporters and made threats to the First Amendment real by calling into question the fundamental job of a free press. That is: to speak truth to power.

We should not forget nor can we afford to ignore two chilling tweets. Both came in February, during his first month in office.

At even that stage, they revealed, in our newest leader, a depth of his hate, a visceral fury for anyone who dares criticize the Great Leader. They revealed a potent megalomania in the man: At 4:32 p.m. on February 17 he posted this: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @CNN, @NBCNews and many more) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people. SICK!”

Sixteen minutes later he was at it again: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”

Think about what it was he said.

TRUMP MAY BE too ignorant to understand why a free press is essential to protect our freedoms. His base may be too short-sighted to see that, if press is battered under Trump, it can be battered again when Democrats return to power. (And let me interject here. As a tried and true liberal, I would fear Democratic threats to the First Amendment as much as I fear Trump’s threats now.)

But a free press we must have. So long as Fox News can dig deep into the story of Benghazi we remain safer in our rights. The New York Times has an identical duty to reveal any evidence it may find regarding a secret meeting between Don Trump Jr. and individuals linked with the Russian government. The media has exposed both Republican malfeasance in office and rampant Democratic corruption too.

That’s how a free press keeps us safe. We hear the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico criticize Trump. We hear the Governor of Puerto Rico give him praise. The free press is both Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow in action. The free press gives us Senator Bob Corker insulting the president and Sarah Huckabee Sanders coming to the president’s defense. This week the free press brought down the serial sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein and last week toppled cabinet secretary Tom Price, after he wasted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on special charter flights.

The danger under President Trump is that he has a taste only for praise and a furious reaction to anything less. Search his Twitter feed. You’ll see. Twice recently he suggested we all watch Jesse Waters on Fox News. Four times he touted a show called The Five. Sixteen times since swearing to uphold the Constitution (including three tweets Wednesday) he advocated for Sean Hannity’s show. He was an even bigger fan during his campaign, tweeting and re-tweeting calls for all to watch Hannity 41 times. Bill O’Reilly was a favorite with Candidate Trump (87 tweets). Sadly, O’Reilly received only six mentions after Trump took office. This had nothing to do with Trump deciding to act “more presidential” and everything to do with the fact a free press, including particularly a newspaper Trump labels “fake news,” brought O’Reilly, like Weinstein, crashing to earth.

As for Fox News—where the news is always real and fawning over the president is a studied art—Donald J. Trump believes we should block out (or perhaps he’ll block them out for us) all other outlets. Don’t listen to what ABC reports. Snap off your TV if you come across CNN. Nothing you read in Washington Post is to be believed. Reporters who question him are enemies of the American people.

Fox News?

Fox News reporters are great.

Since he announced he was running for office on June 15, 2015, Donald J. Trump has sung the praises of Fox New in 365 tweets.

NONE OF THIS PROVES we are dealing with the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler in the White House today. What it does remind us about is the manner in which Hitler and his minions set to work in 1933 to control, as much as possible, what the German people heard and read and saw every day.

So take your pick. Is the President simply ignorant of what the First Amendment is about?

Or does he understand—and does he just not care?

Since posting this originally in October, my concern has only grown. Trump has added to his lengthy list of shows (357) he would like us all to watch, always on Fox News, and complained about “fake news” from all kinds of new sources. We now have 167 Twitter posts about “fake news.” Jake Tapper, for example, is a “CNN flunky. Sean Hannity is a Hero of the People.

Pravda, my good Americans. правда, to you.